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This poem and others are available in my books, Nothing Works: Meditations on Aikido, Buddhism, the Tao, Zen, and other inconsequential things....and, Nothing Special, and Nothing Matters..., available thru Amazon.com, in print and Kindle editions and Barnes & Noble websites.....Also available as an e-book via Smashwords.com. Try this link: www.nothing-works.com for the full array of options.

Your aikido will only improve when your concept of aikido improves.~ Kenjiro Yoshigasaki

Sustainable Practice

As I get older
And my Aikido practice ages
(Matures?)
Along with me
I am reminded of the quote above
And how difficult it is
To improve or even sustain
My Aikido practice unless
My concept of Aikido changes
As I do physically
The need to adapt, change, grow
To transform self and art
Is a constant need and struggle
But can only happen
If and when your concepts change
And you are open to this very possibility
This, I constantly remind myself
As I step on the mat
Breathing, moving, breathing, moving
Doing my best to sustain an art
That has also sustained me
For long, hard, joyous decades
I find my mind, my mind finds me
As I move to where my ego smugly sits
And destroy it!

There is a mystery to life
An uncertainty, with many unknowns
We try to plan, to predict
And sometimes, we get lucky
But, for the most part we don't
So we come up with ideas
Ideas like fate, destiny, karma,
Or, God's will, god's plan
Some kind of explanation
Beyond the fact that life
Life is just this way - mysterious
But, some would hijack this mystery
This honest mystery and create
A belief in supernatural entities
The gods did this, God did that
Then wrap around this god-belief
Some kind of religious trapping
That then traps people's minds and bodies

We are all looking for some kind of
Self-fulfillment, some meaning
To our lives and the world around us
But, if you can accept the unknown
Accept that the universe has mysteries
Mysteries that aren't supernatural
Mysteries that can slowly be explained
Or, perhaps not....at least, not now
Still, we can look at the world and marvel
We can look at the world and cry
We can look at this world of pain and joy
And have faith - faith in ourselves
Life is billions of temporal paths
All leading into a future
That does not have any perceived clarity
But that does not mean we should
Abdicate our ability to think and reason
They say that if God does not exist
Then we would have to invent him
To explain the mystery and give us comfort
I find comfort in good, intelligent people!
And the mystery, remains just that

I turn my back on angels
Who the fuck needs them?
Needs such righteousness, such purity
I look to demons, sinners
Those who are fallen, like me
To them I can relate to
Remember, the Light Bringer
Came to us, came to us
Perhaps, even he couldn't stand
The uptight stink of heaven

Sitting in a bar
On the north side of Chicago
Watching people, thinking
I can almost grasp it, almost
It's there, tantalizingly so - almost!
An real existential moment
(I get a lot of those in bars!)
What does it all mean?
We go about our business
Working, doing stuff....
Seeking some sort of connection
But, is there more? Has to be!

I now sit in another bar
A thousand years from now
On a distant space station
Orbiting a majestic gas giant
Thinking the same thoughts -
We have since discovered god
And asked him to give humanity a break
He's been so busy catching up
With the ever exploding multiverse, anyway
But we still search for true meaning -
The bartender keeps them coming
A very retro bar - a human bartender!
Sgt. Pepper plays in the background
Did I say retro?

Maybe in another thousand years
We will have it all figured out??
Later I will take in some
Low gravity Aikido practice
Watching through massive screens
The swirl of fantastic, fast moving gases
In the gas giant below
As nage and uke go round and round
Seeking a union as tantalizingly ephemeral
As that which we have all searched for
Since our mortal creation

And tell me
Over and over and over and over again my friend
You don't believe
We're on the eve of deconstruction
Mmm, no, no, you don't believe
We're on the eve of deconstruction

All the Bannons are a flyin'
All the signs are a pointin', pointin'
Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy
It's bound to scare you boy
Look whose finger is on the button, boy
Look whose finger is on the button!

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of deconstruction

Look at all the politicians a plottin'
Look at Putin come a knockin'
The American infrastructure deconstructin'
Look at all the cabinet choices
Look at all the scandals explodin'
Look at all the Tweetin', my boy
Yeah my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass good legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of deconstruction!

***********************************
Have a good 4th of July......and,
With apologies to Barry McGuire

God visited me tonight
He came out of the night sky
A blazing span of stars and nebulae
He came dressed in tenuous clouds
Drifting in pulse-beat with the spheres
He came with the ocean reflecting
The splendor of the heavens
The ebb and flow of the waters
In counterpoint to the drifting clouds
He came into my own eyes
And found his way into my soul
Where my each and every breath
Measured themselves in cosmic time

Learn about life from life
About death from death
Direct experience
Is the best experience
Do not ponder overlong
Minimize that distance
Between self and object
Then the essential nature
Is revealed
So, kiss the wind
Cry with the rain
Walk the earth
Smell the blossoms
Caress your own tombstone
The color of your mind
Should be the same as that
Which you perceive